- Author: Brianna Aguayo Villalon
- Editor: Wendi Gosliner
- Editor: Lorrene Ritchie
- Editor: Monica Daniela Zuercher
In May 2020, running until the end of the 2021-2022 school year, the US Congress authorized the US Department of Agriculture to issue nationwide waivers that allowed all schools to provide universal free school meals to mitigate the impacts of school closures as well as the broader economic challenges faced by families during the COVID-19 emergency. This study aimed to examine parent perceptions about school free meals and whether these perceptions differed by race and ethnicity. In May 2022, 1100 California parents of K-12 students from varying racial and ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, and State regions responded to a survey to share their perspectives about school meals during the school year 2021-22. Across all racial and ethnic groups, California parents reported that free school meals offered multiple benefits to families, saving them money, time, and stress, and expressed that the stigma associated with school meals was low. However, parents expressed that there was an area for improvement in the variety, taste, and healthfulness of school meals, where parents of Hispanic and Asian students reported less favorable perceptions of these qualities than parents of White students. This study suggests that there is strong support among parents for free school meals, but further efforts are needed to implement a variety of culturally appropriate school meals and make improvements in their taste and healthfulness. Results from the study were recently published in the Health Affairs Scholar journal. The study was conducted by Nutrition Policy Institute researchers Monica Zuercher, Christina Hecht, Kenneth Hecht, and Dania Orta-Aleman in collaboration with Juliana Cohen, Deborah Olarte, and Leah Chapman from Merrimack College, Punam Ohri-Vachaspati from Arizona State University, Michele Polacsek from the University of New England, Margaret Read from Share Our Strength, Anisha Patel from Stanford Pediatrics, and Marlene Schwartz from the University of Connecticut.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
When Genoveva Islas was 12 years old, she was responsible for giving insulin injections to her diabetic tia, her aunt.
“Tia lost her toes, lost her leg, lost her life,” Islas said. “This is a very important fight.”
Islas is director of Cultiva La Salud in Fresno, which works to address poor nutrition and physical inactivity in the San Joaquin Valley. The fight Islas referred to is the “soda wars,” a battle to reduce the amount of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) consumed by Americans. SSBs are the single most significant source of sugar in Americans' diets, amounting to nearly half of sugar intake. They have been unequivocally linked to increases in obesity, diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, tooth decay and some cancers.
Islas talked about the tragic fate of her tia at the July 2019 California Obesity Conference in Anaheim, where 1,025 public health, nutrition, science and political leaders convened to share strategies for overcoming the childhood obesity crisis in the United States. She was part of a panel on taxing sugary drinks to reduce SSB consumption and fund community health programs.
“I'm here because I believe health is a right, not a luxury,” Islas said. “A soda tax is a fight for the community I love.”
“I say regressive is the incidence of diabetes in my community, the incidence of heart disease in my community,” Islas said. “The California Central Valley has the highest rates of drinking water violations. Bottled water is costly. People are choosing sugar-sweetened beverages when it is the most affordable choice for them.”
Money raised by the soda tax, Islas continued, could support water quality improvements and encourage the public to drink free and safe tap water.
California Assemblymember Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica), who has proposed soda tax legislation several times, was also on the soda tax panel.
“The soda industry has poured a huge amount of money toward lobbying in Sacramento against soda restriction laws,” he said.
Bloom suggested that soda tax proponents be clear about the implications of childhood obesity and associated diseases when working to implement soda tax laws.
“Words like ‘epidemic' and ‘crisis' are used so much, they start to lose their meaning,” Bloom said. “We have a lot of statistics on the science of sugary drinks, but we don't talk about the misery this visits upon people and families and communities – amputations, heart disease, cancer. We need to start telling those stories viscerally.”
Kenneth Hecht, director of policy at UC's Nutrition Policy Institute, moderated the panel discussion. He said that a soda tax is the most cost-effective intervention to reduce soda consumption. It has been implemented and studied in Berkeley, Calif., where voters in 2014 passed a local initiative to tax soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages 2 cents per ounce. Three years later, residents reported drinking 52 percent fewer servings of sugary drinks than they did before the tax was imposed.
“Soda taxes work,” said Kristine Madsen, director of the Berkeley Food Institute and professor at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, who evaluated the Berkeley soda tax and also spoke at the conference.
The bulk of Berkeley's soda tax revenue is dedicated to supporting nutrition education and gardening programs in schools and allocated to local organizations working to encourage healthier behaviors in Berkeley.
San Francisco, Oakland and Albany also passed soda taxes. Other communities were planning to put soda tax initiatives on the ballot, but were stymied by a preemptive strike waged by the soda industry. In June 2018, the California Legislature passed a bill to preempt any new local beverage or food taxes until 2031. According to Assemblymember Bloom, beverage companies spent millions to get an initiative on the ballot that would have prevented local communities from raising taxes without a two-thirds vote, up from 55% of the vote currently needed. They offered to drop the initiative if the California Legislature would impose a moratorium on local soda taxes.
Bloom called the preemption a “disgusting tactic.”
“We had to capitulate to that to protect our local governments,” Bloom said. “It was never a sprint to address soda tax, but now it's become a marathon.”
Public health activists were also outraged.
“If you have enough money, you can put anything on the ballot and use that to extort lawmakers to get what you want,” said Mark Pertschuk, director of Grassroots Change and a conference speaker. “This is a war on local democracy. We need to educate people on what preemption is.”
“It's the same as being tobacco free and drug free,” he said.
One public organization leading the way is UC San Francisco (UCSF), which employs 22,000 staff, academics and medical professionals. In 2015, all its campuses and buildings removed sugar-sweetened beverages from food service outlets and vending machines as part of its Healthy Beverage Initiative. Laura Schmidt, professor in the Institute for Health Policy Studies at UCSF, discussed the ban at the Childhood Obesity Conference.
“When you live in a saturated environment, where it's always in reach, that makes it difficult to say no,” Schmidt said. “We have to change the environment. All effective solutions follow the iron law of public health. If you reduce availability of harmful substances in the environment, you will reduce consumption.”
At the culmination of his Childhood Obesity Conference talk, Bloom announced the recent formation of Californians for Less Soda, a new coalition of public health and health equity advocates and health professionals aligned to decrease consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in California through effective policies.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
"Years of federal neglect have resulted in many poorly equipped school kitchens, making it impossible to serve the nutritious meals that students need, particularly in light of the obesity epidemic that has affected so many youngster," said Kenneth Hecht, NPI coordinator.
During the past six years, Congress provided nearly $200 million to help schools purchase new equipment. Pew Charitable Trusts engaged NPI to see whether the grants enabled schools to make more meals from scratch with locally grown food and lead children to make healthy food choices.
NPI researchers visited 19 schools across the country to see new equipment in action and interview food service professionals, administrators and students. Their report was issued this month by Pew Charitable Trusts.
“Just one new appliance or serving station can have surprising impact on meal programs and students,” Hecht said. “Because of the USDA's School Kitchen Grants, more students are choosing school meals and they are eating more fruits, vegetables and other healthy options.”
The Nutrition Policy Institute, a statewide program that is part of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, contracted with Pew to take a close look at a sample of representative schools that received the USDA kitchen equipment grants. The 19 schools – in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, California, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, North Dakota and Maine – were chosen to represent a range of sizes, grade levels and community types (urban, suburban and rural).
One of the schools in the study was Ygnacio Valley Elementary School in Concord, where the worn and dimly lit serving line made meals look lackluster. With the USDA grant, the school purchased a new serving counter with heated and refrigerated serving wells to keep dishes at proper temperatures, a salad bar and under-counter lighting that draws attention to colorful produce and other healthy fare.
“Children are taking and eating more fruits and vegetables because they can actually see how beautiful the food is and get to it easily,” says Megan Webb, the school's food service manager.
Another California school involved in the research, Robertson Intermediate School in Daly City, used the grant funds to purchase a large, three-door refrigerator and a warming oven. The upgrades helped the school increase the number and appeal of its entrée options and made it possible to contract with a different meal vendor for the 2015-16 school year.
“We absolutely needed new equipment; what we had barely functioned,” said Audra Pittman, superintendent of the Bayshore Elementary School District.
“The food is really good,” said one student cafeteria helper. “It's much better than last year.”
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
The youngsters are required to take at least a half-cup serving of fresh fruits or vegetables as part of a healthful meal to meet national nutrition standards, but I noticed they were voluntarily eating the fresh leafy greens and orange slices.
The children had selected the food themselves from a new serving line, which was made possible by a grant from the USDA aimed at encouraging children to eat healthier school lunches. U.S. Department of Agriculture has been providing a new round of grants since 2013 to upgrade kitchen and cafeteria equipment. Ygnacio Valley Elementary School is in Mount Diablo Unified School District, which received a USDA grant.
About one-third of children in California are overweight or obese, which is associated with serious health risks.
According to The Pew Charitable Trusts, 93 percent of school districts in California, and 88 percent nationwide, need at least one piece of equipment to better serve students nutritious foods.
Kenneth Hecht, director of policy for the Nutrition Policy Institute organized the Sept. 3 visit to the Mount Diablo Unified School District for Congressman Mark DeSaulnier and USDA executives to see the improvements.
The new serving line allows for food to be displayed so the children can select their own food, whereas before, each tray was filled by a server and handed to the students.
“We've seen that when the children select their own food, less food gets thrown away,” said Fisher.
“The examples we are seeing at Mount Diablo Unified School District are perfect illustrations of what these USDA grants can do, from the procurement of food to serving healthy meals to children,” said Hecht.
Congressman DeSaulnier, who ate lunch with the students, is sponsoring the School Food Modernization Act (HR 3316) to continue and strengthen the USDA grants program.
Another piece of federal legislation aimed at improving child nutrition is the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which includes farm to school support and expires on Sept. 30, 2015.
“This fall is a pivotal time for the future of Farm to School programs across the country,” said Gail Feenstra, deputy director of the UC Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SAREP) in the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Riverside schools have transitioned from heating prepackaged meals to buying local produce and preparing fresh food on-site.
According to Kirsten Roloson, director of Nutrition Services, and Adleit Asi, operations manager, Riverside Unified now buys $400,000 worth of produce from local farmers. One farmer, Bob Knight, who supplies oranges and other produce to Riverside Unified, said he's making five to seven times more money selling to schools than he did before.
“Farm-to-school programs increase access to fresh, healthy produce among school children while also supporting local farms,” said Feenstra. In California, she noted that 2,626 schools participate in farm-to-school programs, serving 1.8 million students and buying more than $51 million in produce from local California farmers.
Feenstra will be leading a similar farm-to-school tour for policymakers in Sacramento on Sept. 29.
"With new equipment and fresh produce, schools can prepare healthy and more appealing school meals that may be the most nutritious meal a child receives that day," Hecht said.
Whether children eat with forks or fingers, the nutritional quality of the food they eat can affect their lives, long term.
The University of California Global Food Initiative aims to put the world on a path to sustainably and nutritiously feed itself. By building on existing efforts and creating new collaborations among UC's 10 campuses, affiliated national laboratories and the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the initiative will develop and export solutions for food security, health and sustainability throughout California, the United States and the world.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Kids are eating better in Contra Costa County schools and it improves their long term health, said Congressman Mark DeSaulnier in an interview broadcast by KTVU News in San Francisco. The congressman was at Ygnacio Valley Elementary School to eat a healthy lunch with students yesterday.
The school received a USDA grant to purchase new kitchen equipment. The UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) has a contract with Pew Charitable Trusts to do case studies of selected schools around California and the nation to show the benefits of the USDA grant program, and to promote its continuation in Congress for future years.
"Many schools are making do with obsolete equipment that cannot readily meet the new, tougher federal meal standards," said Kenneth Hecht, NPI director of policy. "With new equipment, schools can prepare healthier, fresher, more appealing meals that are often the best meal kids get all day."
In the media report, DeSaulnier walked through the new serving line with Ygnacio first-graders and sat down to enjoy a healthy lunch with them. According to KTVU news, the congressman said he has heard a lot of arguments in Washington, DC, against changing food in schools, but he believes it makes a long term difference for children.